The political and religious identities of Southeast Asia were largely
formed by the experiences of the fifteenth through seventeenth
centuries, when international commerce boomed before eventually falling
under the domination of well-armed European powers intent on monopoly.
This book is the first to document the full range of responses to the
profound changes of this period: urbanization and the burgeoning of
commerce; the proliferation of firearms; an increase in the number and
strength of states; and the shift from experimental spirit worship to
the universalist scriptural religions of Islam, Christianity, and
Theravada Buddhism

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